“Be quiet, Chrissie.”
“But it hurts.”
“What hurts?”
“My belly hurts. My belly hurts.”
“Of course it hurts. You’re too full. You shouldn’t have stuffed yourself like that.”
“But it hurts. It hurts. I hurt.”
They sighed even louder, and I screamed even louder, because they didn’t understand. My belly hurt in a sicky, low-down ache, like an iron fist squeezing my guts, and then I hurt in other places, secret places, in my throat and head and chest. I hurt because I missed Da and Linda and the handstand wall and my marble. I screamed so much I was sick, and then I was quiet. I felt better when I had been sick. The keepers usually didn’t, because I had usually been sick on them.
After a while they put a lock on the larder door, so I started stealing things from the breakfast table. I squirreled them in my cupboard and ate them under the covers at night.
“Why is there raspberry jam on your sheets, Chrissie?” a keeper asked one Sunday, peering over my shoulder as I stripped my bed.
“What raspberry jam?” I asked.
“That raspberry jam,” he said.
“That’s not raspberry jam,” I said. “That’s blood. I had a nosebleed.”
“Hmm,” he said, taking the sheets from me. “A nosebleed with seeds in it. Interesting.”
“Well I am the bad seed,” I said.
By the time I left Haverleigh I had learned to fear the strength and size of my appetite, because what I had eaten there had strapped itself to my body. Each time I splashed my face with water my hands brushed over bulges at my cheeks and chin. When I left I barely ate, and my bones rose back to the surface like curds separating from whey. The hunger was always there, beating fists against the tight seal I had fastened around it, but I pushed it down. It hurt too much to be big. Too big to fit in the clothes that smelled of Linda and the streets. Too big to hide. Too big to love.
• • •
Is there a reason you’ve come here?” Mam asked.
I put my elbows on the table and pressed my fingers into my eye sockets. The ache in my head was so strong I saw rings of pink and blue light each time I blinked. I could picture every cell inside my skull, red and raw and angry with pain. I didn’t want to tell her that I needed her. She didn’t deserve it.
“It’s not like I’ve never been to see you,” I said. “I used to come all the time.”
“Not for ages, though,” she said. “Not for years.”
“You’d never met Molly,” I said. I willed her to bite. Of course, of course, your daughter, your little girl. She’s amazing, Chrissie. I’m going to go into the lounge right now and just look at her.
She put her hand up her sleeve. The sound of her scratching her arm was like a knife scraping fish scales. “Why now, though?” she asked.
“Sometimes it just feels like the right time for something,” I said. “Like when you thought it was the right time to have me adopted.”
It worked just as I had wanted: no more scratching, no more noise. She drew her hand out slowly, and I saw the fine powder of skin cells collected under her nails.
“I didn’t know you remembered that,” she said.
“It’s not like I was a baby. I was eight.”
“Well, what do you want me to say? I didn’t know how to look after you. How was I supposed to know? No one ever told me. My mam never looked after me. You don’t just know things if no one ever tells you.”
“It’s not that hard,” I said.
“You weren’t an easy kid to look after.”
“You weren’t an easy mam to be looked after by.”
“Leave it, Chrissie. Why can’t you just leave it?”
I could feel her closing up. I clawed for the list of questions I had assembled on the train. “Did you know?” I asked.
“What?” she said.
“That it was me that did it. With Steven. Before everyone else knew.”
She sat back in her chair and looked to the side. I could tell she was trying to lift away the layers of what-I-know-now to get to the kernel of what-I-knew-then.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”
“How?”
“Well, I didn’t know for sure. But I remember being at church and them—you know—them busybody women. They were whispering to each other, and one of them was saying, ‘They’re speaking to all the kids, aren’t they?’ and the other one was saying, ‘Yeah, they’re thinking something really bad’s gone on.’ Or something like that. You could tell what they meant—that everyone was starting to say it was a kid that done it. And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh. So it was her.’”
“Is that it?”
“That’s all I remember.”
“You must have felt something.”
“Just felt like I’d known all along.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? If you knew for that long, why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Don’t really know.”
“You could have been rid of me sooner. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” I knew I was digging, mining her for affection. I didn’t want rid of you. I wanted to keep you with me. I care about you. You’re my Chrissie. She pulled the sleeves of her dressing gown over her hands and slid them under her thighs.
“I don’t really know what I wanted,” she said. “I don’t remember it that clearly. If I’d dobbed you in it would have been a faff—a big to-do. I think I just couldn’t be bothered. Felt a bit like—well. He’s dead now. What does it really matter?”
“Oh,” I said. There was something humiliating about mattering so little.
“I can’t
